I had a developer working on my Linode, but that relationship has ended. How do I regain access to my Linode?

In most cases, you have the ability to reset the root user password from the Cloud Manager. The cases where the Cloud Manager cannot reset the root password are outlined on our website, which include custom distributions or raw disks.

When it comes to resetting the password for a user on the server itself, that will need to be done by a user with root privilege, using the passwd command. It would look something like this:

sudo passwd $user

You'll need to change the $user to be the actual user on the Linode. You can also use this to change the password of any users that you do not want people using to access the server anymore.

We provide Lish (Linode Shell) as a way to connect to your Linode if you're having trouble connecting other ways, especially in cases where the password needs to be reset. Many users disable root user access to the server as a means of security, though with Lish being an out-of-band connection to your Linode, you can still access the server via the root user. This will give you access after resetting that root user password.

It's likely that you already have a limited user. If not, it's strongly suggested that you normally access the Linode via a limited user, for security purposes. For steps on doing this, you can follow this section of our guide on initial security steps for your Linode:

• Add a Limited User Account

You can also check what users are set up on your Linode running:

sudo cat /etc/passwd

You will likely see many users, like root, mysql, sshd. These are set up when certain services are created and shouldn't be of concern. If you're unsure about a user, you can try a Google search like "Linux user $user" to get more information, once again changing $user to the username that you find.